"I can never hear either the Irish songs or even the Handel aria sung by anyone else without bringing to mind the peculiar purity of McCormack’s pronunciation of “your” as “yoor”. Nor, for that matter, can anyone else sing “My wandering love” as McCormack does here, with its effortless, unearthly floated melismata over six, extended, four-beat measures. He then complements that vocal feat with a perfectly poised concluding, A-flat on “restore”. You have no time to recover from that before, in track three, you hear another example of McCormack’s consummate art in his elegantly restrained account of Schumann’s “The Singer’s Consolation”...this disc is dedicated to sentimental ballads, in addition to the Handel and Schumann we have three passionate, soulful Rachmaninov songs. In two of these, McCormack is partnered by the sweet-toned Fritz Kreisler who provides a haunting violin obbligato. All the singing here is stellar: time and again, the tenor’s vocalism is a thing of wonder. The pianissimo concluding B-flat in “Since You Went Away” or the floated As in his signature-tune “I Hear You Calling Me” are both simply breathtaking. It is too easy from our modern perspective to deride the sentimentality of “In that dear little town in the ould County Down” or “Mother in Ireland” but our own popular culture is hardly innocent of mawkishness and McCormack knew his market. To provide some dignity and balances we have a couple of overtly pious hymns grandly sung to stately tunes and Sullivan’s famous “The Lost Chord”, de rigueur for all singers of any note of that era, including Caruso and Dame Clara Butt; McCormack need not fear comparison with their very different versions.The transfers by Ward Marston are exemplary; the sound gives rise to no listening fatigue ...it contains gems sung by a voice which for sheer quality in its category can only be spoken of in the same breath as Schipa, Vinogradov and Wunderlich."

 

Ralph Moore - MusicWeb-International.com - May 2012